rules are made for other people for centuries like russia or countries like this trade. but what america does is right because america does it. alone welcome to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle the return and we bend of the neo-cons as the middle east descends into a regional civil war and ukraine becomes a failed state washington's foreign policy neoconservatives are on the march the world is their playground.

to cross-talk the neocon agenda i'm joined by my guest robert perry in washington he is an investigative reporter for the a.p. and newsweek who now edits the online news site consortium news dot com also in washington we have jim lobe he is the washington bureau chief for intra press service and director of a blog on us middle east policy called low blog dot com and in champaign we crossed in francis boyle he is a professor of international law at the university of illinois college of law are gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it robert to go to you first in washington you wrote an article recently obama's true foreign policy weakness what is that weakness. well president obama has been willing to fall into the control under the control pretty much of the neo conservatives and some of their liberal interventionists friends he has instead of asserting more of a real break from the george w. bush policies he has he has adopted them he has avoided perhaps some of the more

extreme problems but in many ways he has not challenge them in any fundamental way so why is that why well it's a good question and he he i think he basically is trying to avoid the kind of hard political battle that would be required to if he were to challenge this what's become a very powerful force in washington the neoconservatives have been building strength in d.c. since the one nine hundred eighty s. they've they not only have been important players in the reagan and bush administrations but they've also had keep positions in powerful think tanks they control some of the major op ed pages of american newspapers like the washington post and they've they've established themselves as a force to be reckoned with that should really prevent a president from from challenging them the president does control us foreign policy but president obama has not been willing to do so plus he's surrounded himself with some of these where one might be called liberal interventionists and they're very

very much in league with the neo cons right now you've seen an alliance that's developed over the past several years between the old neo cons and these liberal interventionists and in fact some like robert kagan some of the old neo cons now want to call themselves liberal interventionists so what you've seen is kind of a merger of those forces and president obama has been unwilling to challenge them and in fact as it has enabled them jim in washington as well it seems to me that from the one nine hundred eighty s. to the president to the president that then you can see conservative creed has become part and parcel of the genetic code of american foreign policy. i actually. agree with that particularly i mean they're certainly a factor in american foreign policy but their influence has waxed and waned. over a period of almost four decades now well indeed for decades at least. i mean i i fundamentally agree with what bob you know just just said but i would say i think

. liberal internationalists and neo cons are fairly distinct traditions although they're kind of like first cousins we could talk about that later but they have a light in the past i mean in the one nine hundred ninety s. under bill clinton you saw very much of an alliance between neo conservatives and liberal interventionists particularly as regards the balkans so this the alliance that he's speaking of is quite important but it doesn't just date back a few years it it dates back some decades indeed neo conservatives who originally democrat for the most part ridgeley democrats who became disillusioned with the mcgovern wing of the party as for the influence on on obama i think the neo cons are much less influential than the liberal interventionists and as i say i think there there are important differences between the two groups although they do have a tendency to ally themselves from time to time over several decades francis in

champaign these people that have so much influence it whatever creed we can stress here but they don't have much of a road record of success do they i mean the same people that brought us into iraq are on television talk shows now it's quite extraordinary well it's all a idia logical i went to the university of chicago which is the founding center of the neo conservative movement where i was trained to become a neo con wolfowitz. all the rest of them were there. for the most part not all of them many of them are american jews. whose grandparents fled the russian empire during the programs against the jews this resulted two factors one they hate russia and the russians with the passion and two they are very. real and against. arab and muslim

world this can account for the policies we see toward ukraine in the middle east today second i agree with bob perry and jim lobe on the influence the neo liberals as well obama's mentor at columbia was big enough. who ran his presidential campaign on foreign affairs in two thousand and eight and has stacked the national security council with brzezinski protegees i went through the same program ph d. program at harvard that produced persian ski before me he is an expatriate pole who hates the russians with a passion and wants to see russia discombobulated so the top russian expert on the national security council is a version ski protege so we've stat he's stacked the national security council with

his people so i agree with bob what we're seeing here is a conjunction of both the neo conservatives and the neo liberals with respect to both russia and the middle east this is extremely dangerous not the only the stablish main group staying on the outside criticizing the us are the real politicker typified by henry kissinger again i went through the same ph d. program at harvard the produce kissinger before me he's a german jew who fled the nazis returned to fight he does not have this type of emotional baggage towards russia that bush in ski and his proteges have and that is why there was such productive relations between the united states the soviet union under. nixon by. kissinger in the

real politic years have been completely frozen out now by the obama administration the rivalry between kissinger and persians he goes way back to when they were sister and professor at harvard together and regime skis made sure considers been completely frozen out my understanding is despite his public protestations mike is injured president obama has yet to speak with them ok robert it let's go back to the road record here i mean i just don't see particularly in this century where any of these neocon ideas have actually. made america safer or the world safer it's you know when you look at the situation in the middle east it is it is so confusing that you know we it's even difficult to see where you support one regime that is being attacked by another regime we have the russians are sending jets to help the regime survive in baghdad at the same time obama want to spend five hundred million

dollars on groups of people these mythical moderates in syria i mean that doesn't make any sense a lot of this but just really quickly but quickly the neoconservatives have also been very successful in controlling the narrative of washington i would say is perhaps their greatest strength they've understood the idea of information warfare going back to the one nine hundred eighty s. they they work they work closely with the national security council under ronald reagan it was walter raymond jr who was a cia propagandist was moved over there to kind of organize basically an information warfare against the american people the american people were seen as somewhat suspect because they'd opposed the vietnam war after a time so the idea was how to get them back in line and that and the way they came up with was to develop these central narratives themes as they call them and they would use and so even when they fail because they've been so successful in sort of in influencing these opinion circles of washington they succeed so for instance you

have the catastrophe in iraq in the last. but then the neoconservative narrative is that well yes the after great invasion very successful invasion there was a problem with the implementation of the occupation but then came the surge then came near victory and then obama screwed it all up by withdrawing the troops so there's seem to be able to enforce these narratives even when they don't rematch up with any factual reality but they they have enough bases and they have enough way of influencing the whole the whole way washington things so you get this very alice in wonderland effect and so and they are able to make everything fit into one of their narratives for instance the catastrophe in syria is now being blamed even though the us side is supporting with working with the saudis and others helped create this problem in syria where these extremist became very powerful as rebel forces some of the isis group and for a front the the narrative is that if obama had only sent in more military

support for the rebels earlier then it would have worked out fine so there's always a way to spin this and i think what we've seen is as we've seen similarly and ukraine this idea of how you control the narrative that's what's been happening in the united states let me let me go to gym before we go to the break care let me go to jim jim is it just an information war it's very interesting what but we just heard and frankly i think the influence of neo conservatives in the in the current situation is is being exaggerated here i i don't agree that they're that influential and indeed we've seen in recent weeks that news organizations most recently the ombudsman at the new york times are excoriating. t.v. networks for putting on people who constantly who supported the iraq war and specifically neo conservatives i don't think i don't see a neo conservative bubble at at this moment ok on that point there. you got it when

you were going to a short break and after that show break we'll continue our discussion on neo-con state department. the missing woman. has a. right to see. the first strike. and i think the jury. on our reporters twitter. and instagram. would be in the know. on mom. what's

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one of your comment was. a. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle reminder we're discussing the role of the neoconservatives in american foreign policy.

ok i got to francis and champagne one of the interesting things when you look at the neo cons i mean whatever time period you want to look at it they always use the democracy promotion but in the end it's usually chaos promotion right why i did want to get back to. this point bob was making that and your question that in fact from the neoconservative perspective u.s. foreign policy has been a great success yeah after nine eleven two thousand and one wolfowitz who i went to school with publicly stated that they were going to get into the business of destroying states and then we have the memoirs by general was lee clark saying that they were going to succumb. ple proceed to destroy seven arab muslim states that's exactly what they've done they destroyed afghanistan iraq syria libya they've

dismembered sudan basically they've cracked and have yemen and russia is next so from their perspective this is been a great success now i do agree with jim lobe and bob however that we see a can ruin sphere between the interests of the neo conservatives and the neo liberal interventionists organized underbridge and ski and his protege's who are controlling the foreign policy of the obama administration and the only people really dissenting except for for progressives like the three of us are the real politic ors like like kissinger and they've been locked out so it's a very dangerous situation in the middle east and also in ukraine with russia robert if i go back to the yard from undersea promotion ok well let me go to robert

on that one of his he used that phrase in your article that i mentioned earlier chaos promotion. right they certainly have promoted chaos and as francis says you could look at that from their perspective a somewhat successful part of their concern and in some of the way the neo cons evolved in terms of their thinking comes out of the one nine hundred ninety s. after the first persian gulf war and the demonstration of american military superiority that was beyond anything in the world ever seen then there was also the frustration over the peace process with the palestinians so you had some leading neo cons richard perle of feith and others. who are who worked for the netanyahu campaign in in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. ninety six and prepare this new plan that instead of dealing with these frustrating . palestinian negotiations they would move to this new concept of regime change get rid of some of these countries that were supporting the palestinians or hezbollah or hamas and that was that that gave that evolved into the project for the new

american century in ninety eight when they called for an invasion of iraq that was funny possible once president bush was in office now for nine eleven where the attack then goes against the invasion of iraq happens now you could look at what happened in iraq as a human being and saying it's a horrible disaster hundreds of thousands killed a country ripped apart still ripped apart but if you're looking at it in the from the point of view of eliminating a threat or weakening iraq as as a nation state it certainly could be seen as somewhat of a success so often under the under the concept of democracy promotion which is what the it which is how not only the neo cons but these liberal intervention is always sell their their proposals what you end up with often are these failed states but states that can no longer provide any kind of threat ok jim but they do know what i think you read way they do as it's called backlash it does end up happening in washington. well to answer your question briefly the asli

there have been immense failures i mean by just by invading and occupying iraq they fortified iran which which they or at least people they respect like netanyahu himself is a neoconservative consider the far greater enemy or the far more dangerous enemy same with afghanistan but i'd like to go back i still want to question this notion that somehow obama has been captured by neo conservatives in alliance with liberal inner interventionists i think you saw in syria when. obama at first indicated he was going to attack but then changed his mind i think you can see that there was no control there on the contrary both groups neo cons and liberal interventionists lost that one i think now when he announces if he

wants five hundred million dollars for syrian rebels but congress has to approve it i mean he's he's putting these people off and i think realists remain very much not in charge necessarily but certainly very much in contention in the white house and it's in the white house where foreign policy is controlled under this administration so i would not again i what i said earlier i don't think the neo cons are having a real bubble at the moment in fact i think there's more skepticism directed in toward them than ever before and moreover i think what hasn't been discussed is the fact that republicans neo cons of always dependent on alliances with other groups because they're such a tiny group as influential as they are from time to time and in this case we have a situation where republicans just refuse to do anything that obama wants to do it's true and that's where neo cons gain some influence is. because you have

a republican party that is completely opposed to obama and he has to to some extent accommodate that because that's a political fact of life but that's not and republicans tend to defer to neo cons on foreign policy but the neo cons desperately need the republicans and as we saw on syria last fall when obama said ok you want to do something in syria you want to bomb syria like the neo cons want. the republicans all went back to their constituents and said no we don't really want to do that so i really don't think the neo cons are as influential as has been depicted here although they are certainly a factor in washington francis if we can look at is going on in iraq. obviously the agenda doing invade the country was turned out to be a tragedy for all involved here but how much do you think the neo cons are pushing obama's agenda when in dealing with iraq right now well this is not you know stuff

.

it's true that he finally decided at the last minute to avoid the bombing attack on syria but he had allowed that to move quite a ways you had the remarkable incident last august of secretary of state john kerry who was speaking really for the state department you know liberals are what he want to call them almost doing a declaration of war against against syria before president obama pulled the rug out from under him now because i think president obama doesn't really want to have these wars i think he recognizes that they're not particularly good for the broader american interests that is the economy particularly he sees the difficulties with this but he's been he's been he's been

a finesse or he's not be willing to challenge these people very directly he tries to play along with them as far as he can before maybe at the last minute backing away from one of their extreme policies but he's also going along with some particularly in libya for instance where he was drawn in by the liberal interventionists to attack and destroy the khadafi regime which has led to another failed state in the middle east so you have so i don't think these these these shattering of these states. is anything good for the american economy the american people or the world economy or the world all right gentlemen we've run out of time certain fascinating discussion many thanks to my guests in washington and in champaign and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time remember rostock.

try to. pull it out of. your life or it's a sure thing everybody. know what. it's like but hey. let's think this. is mostly. sometimes for nothing. just me and it's still.

just he still can still be just if you see a stage eight look to be. but speech was. in justifying their stance they're citing all sorts of what they see as international precedents in ca some coming referendum in scotland but the response that they're hearing from the west is that what you're doing is illegitimate but what we've been doing is still full of life the measure if you break into their still. america does is right. for other people for sundries like russia are all trying to be used like a stray that. whatever america does is right because america doesn't.

the u.s. military was built to square off against the soviet union. over western europe but when you take that conventional military and now try to return ask it there's a counter-insurgency force it creates a lot of gaps and that's the kind of private sector stuff. your friend posts a photo from a vacation you can't afford college the difference. the boss repeats the same old joke of course you like. your ex-girlfriend still pens tear

jerking poetry keep. norrish. we post only what really matters. to your facebook you speak. breaking news on r.t. more than four hundred thirty ukrainian soldiers cross into russia and ask for shelter as follows caves claims the army was about to win the war against anti-government forces in a steep terrain. palestinians have accused israel of violating a partial ceasefire saying a child has been killed and some thirty others wounded in an attack on a refugee camp in gaza this amid widespread condemnation of israel's bombing of a un school that killed ten people on sunday. a money making scheme or a backdoor immigration policy critics questioning u.s. quota system that ensures stands of thousands of people remain behind.